What’s the Best Time to Send Email? Here’s What the Data Says (2018)

Email Marketing

What’s the best time to send email? This is one of the most fundamental questions you’ll likely have as an email marketer. Getting your timing right is critical because it heavily impacts the open rate, which impacts click-throughs, which impacts traffic, which impacts conversions.

It’s all about getting that first domino to fall.

Do that and the rest should fall into place.

If you’ve ever done any research on this, you’ll know that there have been several studies performed to find the optimal email send time—both the day of the week and time of the day.

Their research states that 16.64 percent is the minimum open rate and 44.99 is the maximum open rate, but 24.79 is the average and good benchmark to use.

However, you’ll definitely want to take a look at this list of open rates by industry, which should shed more light on what’s acceptable for your brand.

If you’re happy with the results right out of the gate and your open rate is higher than your industry average, then you may want to stick with sending emails on Tuesdays at 10 am.

But regardless, you’ll still want to complete your A/B testing by scheduling another batch of emails at a different time for group B to see if there’s any type of improvement.

I would personally suggest sending them on a Thursday at 10 am to see how big a difference it makes.

Needless to say, you’ll want to go with the one that has the higher open rate.

Test #2: Time of Day

Once you’ve found the day that works best, you’ll want to see what time of day is optimal.

Given the general consensus is that the highest open rate typically happens around 10 to 11 am, you may want to perform an initial test to see how big of a difference it makes by sending emails at those two times.

So for this, you could launch one test where emails for group A are sent at 10 am and emails for group B are sent at 11 am.

Is the open rate noticeably higher for one-time slot than the other?

If so, that’s what you’ll want to stick with.

But I wouldn’t stop there.

While it’s true that late morning usually has the highest open rate, CoSchedule points out that there are some other times of the day when open rates tend to be high across the board.

Here’s what they have to say about that:

8 pm-Midnight. I bet you didn’t expect that one. It looks like emails generally receive more opens and clicks later in the evening. This is likely due to people checking their email before going to bed.

2 pm. It looks like you might be successful by sending your emails later in the day as people are checking out of work mode or looking for distractions.

6 am. I guess this makes sense since 50 percent of people begin their day by emailing in bed.

This offers insight into what some other potential times you could test.

I would personally be interested in seeing what happens when you send emails first thing in the morning at 6 am.

There’s certainly a chance that the open rate could swell if your email is one of the first ones that recipients see upon opening in their inbox and aren’t yet inundated with the tasks of the day.

So you may want to run another test where you target 6 am and see what the results are.

But let me point one other thing out.

When deciding exactly what time of day for your additional tests, it’s important that you put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes.

Think about what a typical day would look like for your average subscriber.

What do they do for a living?

What time do they wake up?

What time do they go to bed?

When are they most likely to check their email?

Is there any period of downtime during the day when they would be more likely to check their email?

And so on.

A bit of sleuthing like this should dictate the specifics of your testing.

Ensuring Accuracy

As with any type of A/B testing, it’s all about getting accurate results.

Conclusion

The tweaks and adjustments that can be made to an email marketing campaign are nearly infinite.

But one of the most fundamental things to examine is the timing of your emails.

Get that right and it should bode well for your campaign as a whole.

Examining prior studies like the ones I referenced earlier is a good place to start and should give you a rough idea of which days and times are most conducive to a favorable open rate across the board.

But remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and every brand is just a little bit different.